Social Media Roundup: March 11, 2014

How To Create a Mobile Marketing Campaign
Designing and executing a successful mobile marketing campaign is complex, and the competition's getting better at it. So should you. This blog by Jennifer Wong, director of marketing at HasOffers, posted on Jay Baer's Convince & Convert website, provides a step-by-step guide on how to do it. As more and more local business searches migrate to smartphones and tablets, marketers must embrace mobile marketing to stay relevant and keep in front of their customers. The post takes you through the basics and shows you what you need to do to make your mobile campaigns into winners.

Global Data Snapshot 2014 - with "Actionable Insights"
This set of 183 slides from social media marketing firm We Are Social captures the state of the global Internet in January 2014. The previous item looked at how to set up a mobile campaign, and here's why: as of January 2014 there were 6.5 billion mobile subscriptions on Planet Earth. Another stat: of the 2.5 billion people online worldwide (out of 7 billion total), about half (1.2 billion) are on Facebook. The slide show provides hard data to demonstrate, among other things, that no other channel provides access to so many current and potential customers on devices they have with them at all times and use more and more to search for goods and services they intend to buy right now.

Have Your Customers Do the Work on Instagram
Here are some innovative ways to get your customers - and employees - working for you on Instagram, which grew into a major channel for brands during 2013. This blog by Thibaut Davoult of Nitrogram on Social Media Examiner includes four how-to tips, as well as several related links. Example: some businesses create ads with Instagram submissions from their customers, which is a "two-fer": 1) lower-cost media and 2) built-in social media buzz. Giving fans something in return will get you lots of creative, fresh visual content you can use in your advertising. Another tip is to collect great fan photos and show them on Instagram's popular video channel as stop-motion videos.

Block Unwanted Attention on LinkedIn
LinkedIn members have long wished for the ability to block their profiles and network activity from people they don't want to interact or share information with. The default on LinkedIn is for profiles and other information to be public, which is sensible (this is a business and professional network, after all), but we all know folks we'd just as soon not have any contact with, even passively. Now LinkedIn has added the ability to block them.

The "Olden" Days: What Social Media Has Replaced For a perspective on the changes social media has wrought, read this amusing collection of "9 things from the '90s" that have been replaced by services and activities on social media. Some examples from the article by John Kultgen, content director at Likeable Media:

• The Yellow Pages
• Classified ads for jobs
• Disposable film cameras
• Camcorders (VHS tape)

And don't get me started on what life was like in the 1950s, junior. We'd barely had time to get used to the wonders of polyester.

Daniel Lieberman is the founder of Daniel Lieberman Digital ("I speak Geek - You don't need to"). Based in Shelburne Falls, Mass., he helps companies, organizations, and individuals learn to use the Internet to communicate, market, and brand themselves using the most up-to-date tools and techniques. Contact him at 413-489-1818 or daniel@daniellieberman.org.